Xiaomi updates its gaming smartphone with the new Black Shark Helo. The key features being a powerful hardware, cooling system, and aggressive pricing.

The Black Shark Helo features a 6-inch FullHD+ (2046 x 1080 resolution) AMOLED Display. The refresh rate is still 60Hz, unlike other gaming phones like Asus Rog & Razer Phone 2 that sports a smoother 120Hz. The display is, however, HDR10-complaint and with a dedicated mobile chip by Pixelworks, the SDR contents are converted to HDR in real time.

Internal includes a Snapdragon 845 which is the top of the line chipset on Android smartphones in 2018. There are 2 memory versions: One with 6 or 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage and the other with 10GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The back sits a dual camera setup of 12MP and 20MP, a similar setup seen on Xiaomi’s flagships Mi Mix 2s and Mi8. There’s also a fingerprint sensor below the rear cameras. The back looks like a gaming phone with a glowing logo which you can customize to the colors of your choice. Also, there’s a LED strip on both sides of the phone.

The front houses a dual stereo speaker and a 20MP selfie camera. Sadly, both the headphone jack and a microSD card slot is missing. There’s a 4000mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 Support.

Since it’s a gaming phone, thermals are taken care of by a Vapor Chamber Cooling that uses dual heat pipes near the CPU area to dissipate heat. Xiaomi claims that such a setting can reduce the CPU core temperature by 12 degrees, and then the temperature of the entire phone will be more uniform and feel more comfortable.

The base variant of 6 or 8GB RAM comes with a single Bluetooth game controller, while the higher end 10GB version gets a dual Bluetooth game controller.

Software-wise, it’s running on Android 8.1 (Oreo) with a customized Joy UI layered on top. There’s a Game Studio app with which you can change hardware settings as per the game.

Xiaomi Black Shark Helo Price & Availability

The 6GB/128GB version of the Xiaomi Black Shark is priced at US$460, the 8GB/128GB version costs US$504 and the 10GB/256GB version is priced at US$605. Sadly, its only available in China and there’s no news on its availability elsewhere.

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